


Engineer

by Aaron_The_8th_Demon



Series: Red Dust [2]
Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Developing Friendships, Fluff, M/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 04:26:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18308165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aaron_The_8th_Demon/pseuds/Aaron_The_8th_Demon
Summary: Patrice remembers when colleges started offering courses specifically for aspiring astronauts. Engineering, survival, Russian language… all these strange requirements that most people probably wouldn’t associate with going into space. It helped to be an ROTC cadet, too, especially Air Force or Naval ROTC. It’s how, despite what his parents and advisors had to say, he spent three extra years in school as a cadet learning all this stuff that he’d never thought would be part of space travel.Patrice graduated as an “extraplanetary engineer” and a cadet-captain in Army ROTC (because that was the only ROTC program at his school) with high honors. He was more than three hundred thousand US dollars in debt. And he was the third candidate selected to go to Roscosmos that year.





	Engineer

**Author's Note:**

> Two fics in one day... weird! Also, more of an AU that literally nobody asked for.
> 
> This is a prequel to *Breathe For Me*, but either of them can be read separately without the other. I recommend reading them both, though, in the order they were written, because for some reason I'm especially proud of these two.

Patrice remembers when colleges started offering courses specifically for aspiring astronauts. Engineering, survival, Russian language… all these strange requirements that most people probably wouldn’t associate with going into space. It helped to be an ROTC cadet, too, especially Air Force or Naval ROTC. It’s how, despite what his parents and advisors had to say, he spent three extra years in school as a cadet learning all this stuff that he’d never thought would be part of space travel.

Any stupid thing was enough to disqualify you. Every six months you were required to pass psychiatric evaluations. You could never have anything below a 90% on written tests or a 95% on practical tests. You couldn’t miss more than fifteen hours worth of classes (that was collective, too, not per course) in a year. And even if you achieved those things, you were competing against all the other students even while they encouraged everyone to work as a team, and the top fourteen candidates would be sent to Roscosmos for a year of even more training. Eight astronauts would be sent on a Soyuz to a planetary station for two years, while the others would go to the moon for twelve months. The first group could only be the best.

So, Patrice graduated as an “extraplanetary engineer” and a cadet-captain in Army ROTC (because that was the only ROTC program at his school) with high honors. He was more than three hundred thousand US dollars in debt. And he was the third candidate selected to go to Roscosmos that year.

Twelve months of training with cosmonaut alumni was certainly an experience. There were four groups of four, and Patrice’s three “squad mates” were all Americans, so at least he didn’t just have to speak Russian all the time. A medical student named David, a geology major named Kevan, and an electronics technician named Steven (who almost everyone found to be slightly unlikable in some way). He knew in other squads it was probably different, that there were international candidates who didn’t speak English and the whole squad would’ve been forced to speak Russian the whole time, and he was glad he didn’t have to. Russian was his third language and it was so different from French and English.

The squads didn’t actually see that much of each other during the year with Roscosmos. So when the missions were announced, the only astronaut (they were still astronauts, even though they’d technically been trained to be cosmonauts instead) in Patrice’s mission that he was familiar with was David.

Ivan Bocharov read off the clipboard their names and nationalities for the first mission: Backes (American), Bergeron (Canadian), Cassidy (Canadian), Krejci (Czech), Marchand (Canadian), Pastrnak (Czech), Rask (Finnish), Chara (Slovakian). Patrice at least didn’t have to hold his breath for long, being the second one called, and it made him happy there’d be other Canadians up there with him. Bocharov then explained to them - Cassidy and Chara were so much older because they’d been training for this before one could just go to college to become an astronaut, and had always been intended for this mission.

Patrice went around and shook hands with all his new teammates, greeting half of them in Russian because he didn’t know if they spoke English. Turns out they did, even Chara, who was technically a cosmonaut because he’d been with Roscosmos for over a decade. Patrice immediately liked all of them, getting a sense that he wouldn’t mind working and living with these guys for the next two years.

There were two days between mission selection and launch. Everyone was put through a final psych eval and a complete physical on the first, while the second was allocated as the last time they’d be able to contact their families. Patrice spent more than three hours on Skype with his parents and siblings, explaining to them what he’d be doing up there and how long he’d be gone and yes, he’d take lots of pictures to show them when he got home.

Now, today, he’s finally going. There are multiple compounds set up on Mars, now, thanks to Roscosmos’ efforts in collaboration with NASA and other space agencies. Russian cosmonauts are already up there, have been there for years in fact, but they only inhabit two of the complexes. The others will be filled with new people, to run experiments and learn how to live away from earth. The expedition Patrice is part of has two scientists, two doctors, two engineers, a technical worker and a bureaucrat. They’re all in yellow suits with different flags on their shoulders, and they all gave 200% to get here in the first place, united by common goals and two shared languages.

“The jump-gate is the worst part,” Dmitry Kagarlitsky tells everyone across the comm. “After that it’s completely smooth.”

“How do jump-gates work?” Pastrnak asks.

Several of them start discussing it, their voices filling Patrice’s helmet with quiet noise while he runs pre-flight checks. He and a cosmonaut from a different mission, Vadim Shipachyov, are the pilots. All the talking, even between themselves, has to be in Russian with the mix of astronauts and cosmonauts.

Behind his seat, Marchand is teasing Pastrnak for being scared of flying - “How the fuck are you an astronaut if you don’t even like planes?” - but there’s humor in his tone.

Patrice asks honestly before Pastrnak can say anything in response: “How are you an astronaut when you can’t take anything seriously?”

Marchand bursts out laughing and doesn’t really answer. “I like you, Bergeron. We’re going to be really good friends.”

Shipachyov lets Baikonur know they’re good to go, and everyone in back goes silent while it happens. Patrice manages to keep a grip on himself, but inside, he’s so excited and nervous. Part of him can’t believe he’s finally at this point, going up into space and shortly following to Mars. It’s more than worth the three hundred grand for this chance.

“Have you been here before?” Shipachyov asks.

“No, this is my first time. I graduated and came straight to Roscosmos,” Patrice admits.

The cosmonaut smiles. “You’ll like it. It’s very different up there, but nobody regrets going. The first time I went up I tried to find Cherepovets through the window, but it was too far away and after that I stopped looking. You don’t really see the _oblasts_ or even the countries from up there, just the land meeting the oceans. It changes how you think about things.”

Patrice nods inside his helmet, taking in the words and considering them. Shipachyov is a year younger than him, but has already been to space once and is more experienced. Cosmonauts seem to always be more experienced.

They press buttons, flip switches, wait some more. It’s going to be a couple of minutes until they actually take off. “What was your first mission?”

“The first time I went up, it was also with astronauts,” Shipachyov remembers with a nostalgic frown. “We were testing a new safety protocol for the jump-gates. I got into orbit with Mars, but never went down with the landing team. This will be my first time at _Perviy Institut_ as a researcher.”

Actually taking off is an event that Patrice doesn’t think he could’ve been prepared enough for. It’s like being in a commercial airplane times a thousand, being yanked back into his seat by the G-force. Nobody is screaming, but instead the others get unnaturally quiet. They’ve all trained in the machines and kind of know what to expect, but reality is always going to be different from the simulations. All but one of the cosmonauts have been in space at least once before, Chara and Cassidy have been up multiple times, sometimes for months during certain missions. Patrice, Backes, Pastrnak, Krejci, Marchand, and Rask are all new at this.

There’s phase one, then phase two, and then they’re in microgravity entering low orbit. Backes takes off his helmet to throw up, Pastrnak just looks relieved not to have that feeling of “flying” anymore. Marchand is whistling the tune of Baby Shark over the comm. until Yevgeny Mozer politely asks him to stop. They can get out of their seats for the next couple hours of travel until they reach their jump-gate.

“You should go look,” Shipachyov insists. “There’s nothing like it.”

“Alright,” Patrice agrees, unclipping himself from the harness and drifting over to the window.

He’s seen pictures of what the earth looks like from space before, but it’s so much different in real life. There's the idea that here he is, only a suit and a metal hull between him and a quick, cold death. And on the other hand he’s miles and miles and _miles_ above the planet where he’s spent his entire life. There’s no pull because there’s no gravity, so with the exception of his uniform and space suit against his skin, Patrice can’t feel his body. Moving seems exactly the same as being still. On top of everything, he realizes that Shipachyov was right - there’s no lines to show countries and provinces, just the continents and the oceans.

He feels privileged more than anything, to be allowed to see the entire world like this. Tiny and unprotected. Statistically insignificant to the rest of the universe. And yet, deceptively peaceful, breathtaking, gorgeous. Sappy, poetic words fill Patrice’s thoughts as he watches the planet that is his home gradually shrink from behind the glass.

Someone floats over to him, helmet off - Marchand. Patrice removes his, too, because he thinks his new colleague wants to talk. The intuition is correct.

“It’s really something, huh?” Marchand whispers, speaking English now and quieter than Patrice has heard him since they met officially two days ago. Until now, he also didn’t know the man could be serious, either. “Most people don’t get to see it like we can…”

Patrice nods. “Yeah. We’re so lucky.”

They both stay there for a long time, just looking out at the earth in silence. Earlier, Marchand had been practically bouncing off the ceiling like a kindergartner who’s had too much ice cream, but now he seems relaxed and calm, no fear or excitement. Marchand looks at home here in space, helmet under one arm while the other hand keeps him in place against the wall of the shuttle. Patrice is having a similar feeling now, too, the sense that he’s always belonged up here in microgravity and speaking a language that was a three-year struggle to pick up. It’s like the two of them were both born for this, like they were designed to become astronauts and put into gold-yellow pressure suits. There’s a twinge of kinship, now, and Patrice decides that Marchand was right about one thing at least - they’re going to be good friends.

“Does anything scare you?” his colleague whispers eventually, eyes still fixed on the tiny blue ball.

“About the mission?” Patrice asks. Marchand nods once and he thinks. “I don’t know. Maybe that something will go wrong, especially on the ride back. My family will be expecting me home and I never show up for some reason… Christ. I don’t want to think about it.”

“Not being trapped?” Marchand is speaking so softly that he’s almost drowned out by the rest of the small noises in the shuttle. “Like. You’re out kneeling in the dirt on Mars, and nobody can reach you in time before your breath runs out… your suit’s supposed to save you, but you’re just stuck inside it with no air, and if you take off your helmet you’ll still die the same way.”

“Are you worried about that?” Patrice asks, putting a hand on Marchand’s shoulder. “It can’t happen that way, Bocharov said we’ll be going out in pairs. So somebody’ll be around to help if something happens to your air. You won’t just be left to die out there.”

“I know.” He nods again, finally prying his gaze away to look at Patrice. His hazel eyes are so honest. “It’s the only thing I think about sometimes… we’ve all got something, right? Something about the mission we worry about. It’s like how Pastrnak hates the actual flying part. Everything else is so fucking amazing, eight-year-old me is jumping up and down and screaming because I’m _actually in space,_ you know? I just don’t like the suits. They make me feel stuck.”

“Just try not to think of it that way,” Patrice shrugs. God, he still can’t feel his body move, and it’s beyond weird. “It’s not a trap, it’s a tool. It’s going to let you out onto a new world, where most people will never go, just like how most people will never see the earth from this far up. We’ve got such an amazing gift, getting to be here.”

Marchand takes a second to think his words over, then smiles - not a ridiculous grin like before, but a genuine expression of friendship and gratitude. “You’re right. Thanks, Bergy.”

Patrice smiles back. “Any time.” Then Kagarlitsky and Chara are shouting at everyone to get back into their harnesses. Have they really been here for such a long time? “Alright, let’s do this.” He slaps his colleague’s upper arm before floating himself back to the co-pilot’s chair.

The jump-gates are nothing impressive to look at. They’re gray and white rings with technical things sprouting off the outside edges, lined up in a row of four. One goes to the moon, one goes to Mars, and the other two are still under construction but will eventually lead to different points on the asteroid belt. It’s not terribly weird until Patrice realizes he can’t see any stars through the insides of the rings.

“We’re aimed for gate two,” Shipachyov informs them all. “Once we’re through, we’ll make the landing on Mars at First Institute in plus-minus two hours.”

 _Perviy Institut_ had been so named because it was the first complex ever constructed on a planet besides earth (the research station on the moon doesn’t count). Roscosmos is still very proud of this achievement, even though there are now three others at various locations. The mission Patrice is on will go to the smallest complex, nicknamed _Dacha_ (the Russian word for a summer vacation home), which can only hold ten people or less. The others are much larger, with _Vtoroy Institut_ being manned by a crew of fifty five scientists, technical workers, and medical staff. _Dacha_ is about thirty miles from Second Institute, so they’ll be stopping there first for supplies and a briefing.

The shuttle moves through the jump-gate and they were all told about this sensation - reverse vertigo. Patrice still isn’t prepared for the feeling that while he’s sitting perfectly still, everything around him is what’s going off-balance, and that he’ll be fine only as long as he stays where he is. If anyone ever asks him about this once he goes home, he knows he’ll never be able to describe it.

Then they emerge from the other jump-gate and every astronaut and cosmonaut is immediately tearing his helmet off to puke. The more Patrice tries to stop it, the longer it seems to take before he’s back to normal and can resume his duties as co-pilot. It’s a good thing that there isn’t much piloting to be done right now anyway, because Shipachyov needs even longer to recover.

“I’m so fucking glad it’s going to be two years before I have to do that again,” Marchand groans, and several others loudly agree with him.

“Everyone have some water,” Chara encourages. “Excessive vomiting can cause dehydration.”

Most of them take his advice. Patrice is one of them. He unclips himself and moves back towards storage, grabbing three water packets - two for him and Shipachyov, so that the cosmonaut doing most of the piloting can stay in his seat, and one for his new friend, who seems like he’s still suffering.

“Here.” He puts the straw in and hands it over, which is difficult in these gloves.

Marchand sucks the whole thing down in five seconds, sighs, and hands it back. “Thanks, Bergy.”

Patrice debates over rolling his eyes at his last name being shortened, but doesn’t. Instead he reverses the idea. “Sure thing, Marchy. For future reference, Pat is fine.”

“Thanks, Pat,” Marchand grins.

Patrice stifles an amused smile and returns to the controls, passing off the second water to Shipachyov before removing his helmet and drinking the last one himself. It’s lukewarm and stale and tastes like the plastic packet it’s stored in, but he doesn’t mind because it’s rinsing the flavor of his own stomach out of his mouth. He has to get up again after, not just to dispose of the packet but also to retrieve his helmet, which has floated off while he wasn’t paying attention. Patrice is headed for it when it’s caught by Marchand and sent back his way.

Between takeoff, the jump-gates, and actually landing on Mars and _Perviy Institut,_ the twelve of them are only in space for about four hours and ten minutes. Patrice’s knees are shaking under his suit at first as he steps out of the shuttle, but he’s not thinking about that because his mind is completely taken over by the fact that he’s _standing on Mars_ for the first time. He’s one of maybe two hundred people who’ve ever been here since Roscosmos set up the first complex, and it’s amazing to see.

First Institute is a giant gray block in the middle of a rock field, with multi-personnel carriers and ATVs parked all around it and the launch station about a hundred yards off from it. There are a few cosmonauts in blue space suits poking along with tools, but the main population of the complex is inside.

Patrice’s mission don’t actually go into _Perviy Institut,_ but are instead led to one of the MPCs and instructed to take seats inside. He hangs back for a second to say goodbye to Shipachyov: “You were right about seeing it differently. Thanks for letting me co-pilot.”

“You’re welcome. Good luck with your mission, Bergeron.”

They shake hands and walk in opposite directions. Patrice ends up sitting between Pastrnak and Marchand, while a cosmonaut whose name he doesn’t know climbs into the driver’s chair because he’s been here for eight months and knows where he’s going.

“Did you expect all this sitting? I wish they warned us about all the sitting,” Pastrnak remarks in accented English over the comm.

They still have to keep their helmets on even in a fully encapsulating vehicle - there’s no way to effectively decontaminate themselves without an airlock - but there’s a regenerative oxygen supply that they plug into, which can give sixteen hours of normal respiration to up to a dozen people.

“Hey, at least you’re not flying anymore, right?” Marchand snickers.

“Plenty of people are scared of flying,” the tech guy points out.

“Relax, Pasta, I’m kidding,” Marchand snorts. Apparently it’s not just Patrice who’s getting his last name shortened.

“Pasta?” he repeats, sounding confused.

“It’s another word for noodles,” Backes chuckles. “Your last name kind of sounds like it.”

“Also because you look good enough to eat,” Marchand grins.

Newly-dubbed Pasta looks startled for a second before he realizes the other man is kidding, then he laughs. “We have a food supply when we get there, you know.”

“Noodles are full of carbs, they’re fattening anyway,” Rask points out in a flat tone.

Nobody knows if he’s also joking, not even Marchand, and it’s collectively decided that the Finnish biologist is just scary (which doesn’t seem to bother Rask at all, because he goes back to reading on his iPad without another word).

 _Vtoroy Institut_ isn’t a gray block; instead it’s a series of off-white domes connected by translucent tubes, which in overhead pictures forms a hexagonal shape with the largest dome in the center. There's also a small takeoff/landing platform for emergencies, but the main arrivals and departures always take place at First Institute despite the size of this complex. The cosmonaut driving the MPC drops them off at the airlock on dome five, and the eight of them troop into it for decon and doffing. Their last names are on all the components of their gear, but their suits will be easy to find anyway because the visiting astronauts’ are golden yellow and the resident cosmonauts’ are royal blue. Everyone’s uniform jumpsuits, though, are the same shade of navy blue; only the patches are different.

The eight of them are directed to a room at the center of the dome, where a stack of protein bars and a smart screen are waiting for them. Cassidy stands at the front with a cosmonaut whose nametape says Makarov.

“First, welcome to Mars,” Makarov begins. “You are the first people who will live in _Dacha_ since the builders left last month. So, that means you’ll have to keep your suits on and sealed for the first hour post-startup. After that, you can take your helmets off, but they need to be with you for the next hour. After that, though, the danger of a decompression emergency is much lower, so you can take your suits off and leave them in your stalls by the airlock.” Makarov turns to the screen and pulls up a schematic. “This is _Dacha,_ and these are its outbuildings…”

Everything gets covered, and then they’re told about the oxygen garden - it’s about a thirty minute drive on an ATV to get to it from the complex, and is much bigger than they actually need in case of future expansion. “Because of this, it has over four hundred sensors and a separate mainframe,” Makarov explains. “These sensors must be paid attention to by the technical worker, and a diagnostic of the mainframe must be run remotely once per month…”

They’re told about the technical capabilities of their new living space, about the separate lab area which will be shared between Rask and Chara. How to operate the airlock decon and which emergency codes should be used for which things if they have to call a mayday. The frequency of supply deliveries.

Cassidy takes a step forward when Makarov finishes: “So, you probably remember this from training, but the buddy system is in place. Nobody goes through the airlock without at least one other person. Pastrnak, you and Marchand will be sent for electronics repair jobs. Marchand, you and Bergeron are together for mechanical failures, and if Chara or Rask has to go outside and do work, one of you will always be with them. If there’s a medical emergency or someone has to get evacuated, Krejci, Backes, you’re not allowed to both go. One of you needs to stay on-site at the complex, and whoever leaves to deal with it, you take Bergeron or Pastrnak with you - they qualified best at driving the MPCs. Lastly, if you feel the monotony getting to you, then do your mental exercises and take a break from whatever you’re doing. We’ve got two years, so there’s not much time pressure. Listen to music, watch movies, play soccer in the hall as long as it’s away from the equipment; it doesn’t matter. You can’t work yourselves to death up here.”

They’re led back to the airlock, and as they don their pressure suits Patrice glances over to see if Marchy is nervous at all, but he seems to be fine. Maybe he was only talking about the abstract fear of asphyxiating, Patrice reasons, and the space suits were a convenient way to explain it.

It’s thirty miles to _Dacha,_ but that’s really not very far because the drive is almost completely flat and there are no other vehicles, so the cosmonaut can safely drive at about eighty miles an hour. The airlock at this complex isn’t very large, so they go through in twos - Patrice and Marchy go first, being engineers, then Pasta and Backes. The four of them, now deconed, start moving through the checklist of switching everything on. Truthfully, it’s not as exciting as Patrice (for some reason) thought it would be. Lights turning on here are every bit as novel as lights turning on back home, and he doesn’t know why he expected something bigger.

By the time everyone’s gotten in and unpacked the cargo, the two hours have long since expired where they have to wear their suits. It’s about to be time for bed, though, so nobody’s actually starting in on their projects. Cassidy makes them all sit in their tiny cafeteria.

“Alright, now that we’re settled, we’re going to do a little team-bonding… we’re here for two years, so everybody is first names or nicknames, okay? Nothing formal. Let’s see if we can’t find some things in common with each other.”

They go around the table, talking a little bit about themselves and usually getting interrupted by Marchy, who just can’t shut up. Most of them seem to be stifling irritated looks. Patrice thinks it’s kind of funny. Finally it comes to him.

“Okay, my first name is Patrice, but Pat is fine,” he starts.

“Okay, Bergy!” Marchand - _Brad_ \- blurts out.

Patrice snorts and rolls his eyes in an effort not to laugh. “I was a senior when courses for astronauts were offered, so I picked that up instead and I joined ROTC to give me an advantage. I ended up staying in college for a few years longer than I thought I would, so I’m _really_ in debt, but I’m glad I did it. I also played on the men’s hockey team before that as a center, so… I guess if I didn’t make it here, I would’ve loved to be a player for the NHL someday.”

“What team do you watch?” Brad asks, sounding like he’s actually curious about the answer.

“The Bruins.” He grins, slightly self-conscious of his answer. Brad has already said the Bruins are his favorite team, too. “There’s something to love about original six teams. I’m from French Canada, so my family’s a little mad about it, but… I went to college near Boston. All my friends were Bruins fans and they sucked me in.”

Topics change randomly once they’re all introduced and Brad has screwed with their names for them. (“There’s fucking three Davids here, and that’s confusing. So yeah, Pasta, you have to keep being a noodle.”) Movies, favorite foods, things they hated while they were in college… anything and everything is on the table until they finally go to bed. Patrice feels like he’s been glued to Brad somehow, because they’re both assigned the same bunk - Brad climbs onto the top one, declaring that this way if it collapses in the night he won’t get crushed, which Patrice sarcastically thanks him for. Krej and Pasta find this exchange hysterical, which ends up with Tuukka screaming at the top of his lungs for them to fucking go to sleep already.

Patrice finally lays down and closes his eyes. The last thing he thinks as he drifts off is that he’s made seven new friends, and he still can’t believe he’s sleeping on another planet.

**Author's Note:**

> All the named Russian cosmonauts are players for my KHL team, HC Dynamo Moscow. Alt-Captain Vadim Shipachyov is my favorite player. Unfortunately, they were eliminated during the second round of playoffs for the Gagarin Cup this year by CSKA of all fucking teams. -_-
> 
> Learning Russian really is a requirement for a lot of astronauts, especially the ones going to the ISS. A lot of research went into this fic. The only thing really different is that these guys would already know each other really well before getting sent there in real life, but it seemed like it would be funnier if I did it this way instead, and also this is a universe where things are happening differently from how they happen here (obvs).


End file.
